Eger to Vienna

Getting a late start tonight so we'll we how far I get.

We got up early so we would have time to visit the castle and take care of some housekeeping before checkout at 11. It's a pretty impressive ramparts, dating from the 1700s. Not much left of the palace or Cathedral, but the views of Eger are great.

 

We had just about enough time to scoot down to the Bibliothek - who knows how to spell library in Hungarian? This is another really old building Someone wanted to build a school for teachers in Eger. The Bishop was not keen on it, but somehow it got built. Currently being used as a teachers college and library.We did not get a chance to see the library, but we did climb up 10 flights of stairs to see a camera obscura that dates from the 1700s and is mounted on the roof. Unfortunately, the demonstration made Michael dizzy. It's done in a dark room and when they rotate the mechanism the image swings around on the table. With no visual reference(we're in the dark), there is a tendency to lose your balance. Pretty cool. Hard to take pictures in the dark and all you see in the light is the 3 rods that control the pan and tilt and the cover on the lens.THe also has some old telescopes. And a Foucault pendulum.

We left Eger at about 11. Only a couple of wrong turns before we decided to put our faith in the GPS - at least one of the wrong turns took us to the minaret in town. 40 m. high and the farthest north in Europe. After they defeated the Ottomans, they tried to destroy it, but were unsuccessful.

We also decided to trust the GPS to get us back through Budapest. As Americans, we are used to being able to bypass big cities, but it does not work that way in Budapest. All the E/W traffic has to go through the city - on city streets. Once again google maps and the GPS did not agree, but we figured the GPS should be able to find Vienna so we followed it. No wrong turns - yay. Even got us to the hotel here in Vienna with no problem.

The day started out sunny and warm in Eger, but we hit some rain showers west of Budapest and here in Vienna. Hoping it will not be too bad tomorrow so we can walk around. We had dinner at the Palmenhouse and wandered over to the Hotel Sacher for their famous Sachertort. Yum.

The Hotel Sacher is next to the Opera House and there were at least 100 people sitting or standing out front watching a jumbo screen with tonight's performance. Free. Pretty cool. Good tenor.










And off course, we need to end up with another picture of Mozart. I thought about a closeup, but then you would miss the G clef out of flowers in front.

Let's hope for some sun tomorrow.